Bay St. Louis Homes - A Pre-Fab Future?
This two-bedroom, one-bath 'build-to-ship' home received the first new residential construction permit issued by Bay St. Louis since Katrina. (James Cheng / MSNBC.com)
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- The drawings were impressive and the architects intelligent, so it came as a bit of a shock to Waveland and Bay St. Louis residents when the Governors Commission on rebuilding Mississippi’s Gulf Coast suggested they look at a certain type of housing to start with: pre-fab.
No, not doublewide mobile homes, the architects assured people at both events last week.
Bill Dennis, a Rhode Island architect who led the Bay St. Louis design team, explained that the manufactured home industry has come a long way and that homes starting at $25,000 can look good, exceed storm requirements, be added onto in the future or even become a guest house when a larger home is built on one’s property.
The teams for both towns also laid out well-received ideas like new commercial areas along the beach, more open space and paths connecting neighborhoods. But most questions afterwards had to do with housing.
In Bay St. Louis, one resident said she was inspired by the home rising from the debris on Ballentine Street. “It was an aha moment,” she told her several hundred peers.
The first site to receive a new home construction permit from Bay St. Louis, the 1,000-square-foot home was donated to an elderly lady by Allen Associates, a Santa Barbara, Calif., builder.
Called a “build-to-ship” home, it arrived in pieces in October. Ian Cronshaw, a partner in Allen Associates, says the design fits between pre-fab and custom. “We don’t want to do bottom of the barrel stuff,” he says.
$100 to $135 a square foot
It costs $100 to $135 a square foot, but Cronshaw is confident that can come down significantly if the timber was cut and packaged along the Gulf Coast where labor is cheaper than California. “We may be interested” in doing just that, he says.
Bay St. Louis Mayor Eddie Favre says he’s all for encouraging such options as long as the builders meet storm codes. “There are some pretty neat looking designs,” he says, adding that he hopes more will be approved before Christmas.
Bill Carrigee, the city’s building inspector, said a few wind modifications had to be made on the two-bedroom, one-bath home on Ballentine, but that otherwise it was coming along just fine.
His advice to property owners looking at this and pre-fab options: “They must make sure they have a reputable firm and do not buy until plans are approved by this office.”
Dennis and the governor’s commission are working to get pre-fab builders to show model homes in Waveland, Bay St. Louis and the nine other communities they studied. That could happen as early as January.
As for the Ballentine house, Cronshaw is returning on Dec. 17 with extra crew to finish and have the owner move in on Dec. 23 -- just in time for Christmas dinner in her new home.
